


Sign of Morning

by canis_m



Category: Juuni Kokki | Twelve Kingdoms
Genre: Frottage, Future Fic, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-06-23
Updated: 2005-06-23
Packaged: 2017-11-11 00:41:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/472530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canis_m/pseuds/canis_m
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If there were deserts in Tai.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sign of Morning

**Author's Note:**

> For Tin, in honor of "Constellations."

He had asked if he might see the horses. The sun burned between dunes, reddening to coral and languorous orange. It sank too slowly for the eye to discern, but in peripheral sight it wavered, as if its edges at this hour were liquid and undefined. The sky itself grew no vaster, only continued to deepen. Planets appeared, Jupiter and Venus (and Taiki wondered if they were really planets here, if anyone else in this world knew them as such), then the stars after them, while great waves of dissipating heat rose from the sands.

The Khan's second son led him beyond the tents to a fenceless paddock, where mares and foals moved among one another like golden and mahogany clouds. As Taiki drew near they raised their heads, then rustled forward to surround him, blowing and whickering, smelling of horse-sweat and milk and grass. Taiki addressed them, holding both palms open to be breathed upon by beatific snouts. The Khan's son was amazed. He had never seen a youth so immediately beloved of horses. This is the magic of the Taiho who is kin to all creatures, he exclaimed, though Taiki smiled in equivocation and shook his head.

Soon a bay mare came to stand at the shoulder of the Khan's son. She was tall and limber, with no marks of white. "This one I prayed for," he said, laying his arm about her neck. "I tied silk on the tree and there she grew." 

Taiki praised her beauty and asked her name. His guide spoke a word in dialect that Taiki heard as Lark, or Sign of Morning--the words were one and the same. With a gesture for each of the gathered horses the Khan's son spoke a rosary of names: this mare, Mintaka; this mare, Bezel; that foal, Kite. On being introduced the foal bobbed and butted Taiki's arm hard enough to sway him on his feet. That one will make a stallion, said the Khan's son, with a phlegmy hawk of a laugh. Then he fell silent and turned to bow so low that Taiki looked around in surprise. He had not noticed the growing warmth at his back that was his master's approach.

The Khan's son paid due respects and departed. The horses shuffled into watchfulness as Gyousou stepped among them. He had changed into linens in the desert style, pale, not white, fitted with a cowl and hood to guard the neck and ears from sun. The hood draped loose about his shoulders. His sword swung as always from his belt. Against the coalescing dusk and the bay mare's flanks his figure shone as if particularly lit. He eyed the herd and asked whether Taiki had found a favorite. 

"Oh, I wasn't...I hadn't thought to. I've never seen so many horses at once."

"None of these are unsound. The bay has good shanks."

For a moment it seemed instruction on the choosing of a mount might follow, but Gyousou only ran a hand over the mare's withers. 

"Do riboku grow in the desert too?" asked Taiki.

"At oases. Instead of ribbons these tribes use cords with bells, so the tree jangles when the wind blows. It's a sight." Gyousou patted the mare, who strode off swinging her head and flickering her tail. He glanced at Taiki. "You must be hungry. You can eat alone tonight, if you prefer. They roast the sheep entire for the feast."

"Oh." 

It gave him pause. He wondered what another kirin, one less inured to flesh and bloodshed--what En Taiho or Kei Taiho might do in such a case, whether they would choose to eat apart rather than share a table with blackened lambs. He looked at his master who had offered the choice, tried to read the keen tanned face by twilight.

"If Master Gyousou thinks I should." He drew his hands into his sleeves. "But I'd like to eat together."

*

Night brought with it a savage chill. The descent into cold reminded Taiki that this too was Tai, after all, not the disparate realm he had begun to feel it must be. When he left the banquet he huddled his shoulders under the cloak offered to him. Gyousou and the Khan and the assembled men might be drinking for hours over toasts of mare's milk, singing warrior anthems of the glory of the horselords upon the land. There was no need for Taiki to stay. At the tent given to him and Gyousou as a guest hall he requested a bath. He had scarcely removed his shoes before the water basins were brought along with washcloths, combs and pumice stones, a tray of crystal phials filled with oils. A veiled woman and two young boys presented themselves. Taiki told them he would bathe without attendants, and despite the curiosity his word was accepted at once. 

He washed himself sparely, thinking of the dearness of water. Someone might use it after him in conviction of its blessed properties, though the washcloth reeked of ordinary sweat when he was done. The crystal phials baffled him at first. He sniffed one after the other to no enlightening effect. Only as his scrubbed skin dried did he feel how the air and sun had parched it, so he chose the scent that fazed him least, a sugared mildness, and poured it like a drop of melted amber into his palm. When he had rubbed it over his body he looked down at his hands, then at the rest of him. The oil had limned him from his throat to his heels in a faint but visible sheen. Daunted, with goosepimples prickling, he dressed in the robe that was folded out for him. On hearing his call the attendants removed the basins and used linens. The tray of phials was left behind to glint in the lamplight. No one returned for it. Blinking, Taiki turned aside and settled with a blanket among the cushions to comb his hair.

He should have been sleepy: he had drunk wine, and his stomach was very full. At the banquet they had set before him millet cakes, noodles in salted broth, flatbread and yogurt, then fat almonds, raisins, fresh apricots (from where he could not imagine) in exorbitant heaps. After the day of travel and unrelenting newness his hunger had astonished him. He had eaten so formidably that his hosts were pleased. Their pleasure relieved him; if nothing else he had given them satisfaction in their own hospitality. His master had said their pride sprang as much from that as from their herds or their rogue freedom.

He set down the comb, drew the blanket over his legs and straightened it restlessly, to no purpose. The oil from his bath lingered strangely on his skin. He could no longer recognize his own scent. For a second he wondered what Gyousou would say, and then the wondering so abashed him that he fell on the pillows and turned away from the lamp, ducking his face into his crooked arms.

Lying still, he could hear off and on the faint muffled din from other tents in the complex--the banquet hall--the outdoor pits where mutton had been cooked--now and then a scatter of hoofbeats. Sound carried far in the desert air. In lapses between the noise of men and horses he heard the scree of nightjars, the tattling of plovers among the sand. He listened to these things and waited for the footsteps of a stride he knew.

He might have dozed; it seemed to him he only drifted, but he opened his eyes to find the lamplight dimmed almost to extinction. Darkness swam around him, sudden and immense. He heard the slide of fabric, felt the cushions beside him give. Pretending sleep seemed absurd. He exhaled and shifted toward Gyousou.

There was a creak of leather and metal--the sword belt unlatched and set aside. Then the low voice:

"Did I wake you."

Taiki looked up. He could see very little. His robe covered him, and the blanket up to his waist, but he felt bare. 

"I was awake," he said.

The shadow that was his master kept still for so long a silence that Taiki's belly twisted. There was a dumb ringing in his ears. One of us should do something, he thought. He reached and curled his hand on the middle of Gyousou's linen sleeve. As soon as it was done the gesture seemed pathetic, too childish. Taiki stared at his fist in dismay, as if he did not recognize it. With an indrawn breath he gathered himself to sit up. 

Gyousou moved with the force of a sprung trap. Taiki had thought he might be pinned and straddled, was braced for overriding weight, but Gyousou caught him up and lifted him, face muzzled in his hair, throat working as if to hold down unutterable growls. A tenderness that subsumed all other things rose in Taiki. He clutched and nestled close and said his master's name. 

With Taiki in his embrace Gyousou's fierceness began to recede. In a tone of self-reproof he confessed he was not sober. Taiki murmured an agreeable noise. Splayed fingers raked his back, gently, in a motion like the kneading of huge paws; he let himself go slack underneath them as his master spoke on. The Khan had pledged tribute in goats and horses, which Gyousou had accepted, as well as in concubines, which he had declined. There would be races to test the stallions in the morning, as soon as light had dawned enough to see. They would have to wake early but they could rest later, during the heat of the day. 

Falling silent, Gyousou stretched his legs, then rolled the two of them to lie on their sides. His arm on the cushions braced them from beneath. Taiki found himself matched to the long, sinewed body taller and wiser than his own. The feeling of lying parallel abreast made him heavy-headed, struck with happiness so physical it fogged his sight. Weight eased onto him, not all at once but slowly; he felt against his leg the blunt admission of desire. Taiki understood these as confidences, as gifts to him and no one else. Closed lips brushed his brow and his temple, the roots of his mane, until he tilted his chin in a supplication almost too small to be noticed. Gyousou took his head in both hands, cradled it, kissed his mouth. The taste was of liquor and milk. His tongue opened Taiki's lips, slid in, withdrew. For a long time these iterations went on leniently, shallow and warm; even so Taiki lost track of how to breathe between them. He clung to his master's neck. The clench of his fingers betrayed him. At the end of the next kiss Gyousou looked at him, stroked back his hair. 

He had no air to speak with, but he shut his eyes and stammered in gasps that he was sorry. He shivered arrhythmically, tightened in unreasoning places. 

In Gyousou's voice he heard no disaffection, no impatience, as if the hard length roused between them were of no consequence. "Shh. What is it."

"I get dizzy." He wanted badly to be kissed; he was no good at it. It seemed unlikely to him that the weakness could be blamed on kirinhood alone. Gyousou was merciful and did not laugh. Enough for one night, he said. Taiki protested. To stop was the last thing he wanted, what he needed was practice--when he broached this outright Gyousou did laugh, the low chuffing wonderful sound Taiki remembered from his childhood. It was an instant comfort. 

"Practice, then."

"Eh? Ah--eh?" He thought he understood what was meant. "Me?"

Instead of answering Gyousou laid their foreheads together. The place where Taiki's horn had been felt tender, but there was no hurt. Their noses bumped. Their lips were very close. They breathed each other's breath until Taiki gathered courage and closed the narrow distance. Once their mouths were together it was just as before, a mingling, but if he drew back Gyousou did not pursue, only smiled. The smile was reassuring, but Taiki felt perplexed. He tried another kiss, irresolute. There was no change in the result.

His limbs shifted out of aimless discomfort that felt like loss. He dragged on the folds of robe at Gyousou's chest. "Master Gyousou--"

Gyousou bent and set his lips to Taiki's neck. "That won't do either, then." His teeth grazed; he nuzzled where Taiki's pulse jittered under his mouth. "What is this they've painted you with? You smell of honey." 

His kisses dwelled and lengthened on the join between Taiki's jaw and throat. Every time Gyousou bit him Taiki quivered like a zither string. He hardly knew what sounds he made. His hands fisted and unfisted by fitful turns. A spate of tugging loosened his sash. The silk gave and parted. Gyousou's palm cupped the shape of his hip, up and down, untiring, spread to the small of his back, the curve of his buttock--it was the same touch that settled a restive mount on the training ground or the battlefield. Taiki trembled under it, arched as it smoothed between his legs. 

With no warning his master pushed upright, rising to seize something out of the near-dark. He lay down again with glitter in his hand. The glass stopper fell among the cushions. Fragrance spilled across the air starkly, thicker than incense. Taiki craned his neck, stirring uncertainly until Gyousou took hold of his hips. The hand that guided him to turn was wet, wet again as it slicked the innermost skin of his thighs with oil. Gyousou's mouth disheveled his hair from behind. His chest lay hard against Taiki's back. He wrapped Taiki's length in his palm in a single resolving grasp.

Open-mouthed, Taiki buried his face. The cushion swallowed his moan. There was no hope of keeping still with his master's hand on him, giving him leave. He rocked feebly until shame and the remnants of his self-awareness tattered. Beyond that he lost words as if he had never known them. He voiced himself in small houghs of breath, in cries when the murmur at his ear said _let me hear you_ \--when Gyousou pushed forward between his legs with deliberate ease.

They moved together. He felt and knew nothing else. If someone had told him these were halfway measures, he would not have understood. There was nothing halfway in the cracked pitch of his whimpers, in the rigid hot shaft that shoved against him with each upthrust. Within his ribcage his heart galloped like an unbroken thing. Gyousou spoke to him softly, hoarsely, though later Taiki remembered none of what was said except the name he had been given long ago.

*

In his dreams it was already dawn. The morning star tracked low above the crested dunes. Taiki stood at a middle distance from the tents, certain that he was late. He would miss the races if he didn't run. It was the bay mare at his side who refused to be rushed. She held forth on how to choose a rider in expert tones while Taiki's distraction grew. _But we don't choose,_ he said at last. He believed this as he said it. There was no choosing who tied the red cord to the bough. The bay mare only laughed with a sound like wingbeats, called him cousin, told him he was young. She turned away to survey the land with her ears pricked, while toward the east the horizon burst afire with inundating light.


End file.
